Dentro dos meus braços // In my arms
Os abraços hão de ser milhões de abraços // The hugs will become millions of hugs
Apertado assim, colado assim, calado assim // Tight like so; entwined like so; hushed, like so
Abraços e beijinhos, e carinhos sem ter fim // Hugs and kisses and caresses without end
Que é pra acabar com esse negócio de você viver sem mim // Which is to put an end to this nonsense of you living without me!

(repeat)

—
“Garota de Ipanema”(1962, Tom Jobim & Vinicius de Moraes)
—

—

Olha que coisa mais linda // Look, what a most beautiful thing
Mais cheia de graça // Most full of grace
É ela a menina // It’s her, the girl
Que vem e que passa // That appears and passes by
Num doce balanço // In a sweet sway
A caminho do mar // On her way to the sea

Moça do corpo dourado // The girl with that body of gold
Do sol de Ipanema // From the sun of Ipanema
O seu balançado é mais que um poema // Her sashay is more than a poem
É a coisa mais linda que eu já vi passar // It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen go by

Ah, se ela soubesse // Oh, if she only knew
Que quando ela passa /That when she passes by
O mundo inteirinho se enche de graça // The whole wide world swells up with grace
E fica mais lindo // And grows more beautiful
Por causa do amor // On account of love

—
“O amor em paz” (1961, Tom Jobim & Vinicius de Moraes)
—

—

Eu amei // I loved
E amei, ai de mim, muito mais // I loved, woe to me, much more
Do que devia amar // Than I ought to have loved
E chorei // And I cried
Ao sentir que iria sofrer // Sensing that I would suffer
E me desesperar // And grow desperate

Foi então // That was when
Que da minha infinita tristeza // Out of my infinite sadness
Aconteceu você // You came along
Encontrei em você // I found in you
A razão de viver // My reason for living
E de amar em paz // And for loving in peace
E não sofrer mais // And never suffering again
Nunca mais // Never again
Porque o amor // Because love
É a coisa mais triste // Is the saddest thing
Quando se desfaz // When it falls apart
O amor é a coisa mais triste // Love is the saddest thing
Quando se desfaz // When it falls apart

Bossa nova classics are some of the songs curious listeners search for the most, so here are a few of the standards. And as you can see, the Portuguese lyrics differ significantly from their respective English versions (“No more blues“; “Girl from Ipanema“; “Once I loved“).

So much has been written about bossa nova that I think my posts on bossa nova songs are probably more valuable just for the literal translation of the lyrics, in part because there are so many different stories out there – even in generally reliable sources – that it’s hard to feel confident about the veracity of many of them. But below I provide a little commentary on each of these songs.

A “lavadeira” like the ones João Gilberto says he was inspired by.

João Gilberto liked to say he developed his innovative bossa-nova rhythm on the guitar in imitation of the rhythmic sway of the hips of the lavadeiras (laundry women) in Juazeiro, his home town in Bahia. He has also always insisted that bossa nova isn’t a genre; it’s just sambas performed with a little added twist – the new bossa of his guitar and voice. As you know, that bossa — whether it was the result of an epiphany he had while watching the lavadeiras of Juazeiro, or the culmination of a trend in Brazilian music that he managed to capture and express — turned the Brazilian music scene on its head in 1958, and in turn, quickly swept the United States off its feet.

“Chega de Saudade” was the title track on João Gilberto’s seminal 1958 album that is considered the cornerstone of bossa nova. Tom Jobim summed up the importance of the album and João Gilberto’s influence on the Brazilian music scene in his clear-sighted text in the liner notes. At the time, his affirmations seemed exaggerated to many consumers who had barely heard of 27-year-old Gilberto: “In almost no time, he [João Gilberto] has influenced an entire generation of arrangers, guitarists, musicians and singers,” Tom wrote.

Funnily enough, according to Tom, quoted in A Canção no Tempo, this song — which casts off saudade in its lyrics — is nostalgic in its very construction, and not really the best representative of anything “nova”: “Its introduction recalls those traditional introductions of ensembles of guitar and cavaquinho … It has all of the classic modulations of old music… It’s a nostalgic song that’s rejecting saudade!”

But the version released on João Gilberto’s album was indeed bossa nova, with João Gilberto’s rhythmically innovative guitar strokes woven together with his soft style of singing and the simplicity of the lyrics — including the rhyme of peixinhos (fishies) with beijinhos (kissies), which raised more than a few critical eyebrows.

“Chega de Saudade” was first released on Elizeth Cardoso’s landmark album Canção do amor demais, six months prior to Gilberto’s Chega de Saudade, and on that album already represents a strong precursor to bossa nova, with João Gilberto playing his signature guitar accompaniment. Cardoso’s album is considered a “bridge” to the bossa-nova period that came into swing with Chega de Saudade.

22 September 1963: Lyrics published in Jornal do Brasil column “Sing along with Radio JB”

Tom and Vinicius said that “Garota de Ipanema” was inspired by a teenage girl who they often admired as she passed by Bar Veloso, a bar on the street where she lived where the two were devoted patrons in the early ’60s. The bar has since taken the name of the song. In a 1965 interview with the magazine Manchete, Vinicius identified the girl as Heloísa (Helô) Menezes Pais Pinto (Helô Pinheiro, after marriage), saying: “For her we composed, with the utmost respect and speechless enchantment, the samba that put her in headlines around the world and turned our dear ‘Ipanema’ into a magical word for foreign listeners.”

The song wasn’t thrown together on a napkin in Bar Veloso, though. Both Tom and Vinicius labored carefully over their respective parts and, together with João, presented the version they were pleased with during the show Encontro, which debuted its forty-five day run at the boîteAu Bon Gourmet on 2 August 1962. During the show, the trio included a playful intro to “Garota de Ipanema” that could actually serve as an introduction to much of bossa nova:

Vinicius de Moraes with Helô Pinheiro (1960s)

João Gilberto: “Tom e se você fizesse agora uma canção que possa nos dizer, contar o que é o amor…” (Tom, how about if you were to make a song right now that might tell us, explain what love is…)

Vinicius de Moraes: “Para essa canção se realizar, quem dera o João para cantar” (For this song to come to be, if only we could have João to sing…)

João Gilberto: “Ah, mas quem sou eu? Eu sou mais vocês. Melhor se nós cantássemos os três” (Ah, but who am I? I prefer the two of you. Best for all three of us to sing!)

…Olha que coisa mais linda, mais cheia de graça…

21 August 1964: “Brazil seen from afar” column in Rio’s Diário das Noticias newspaper features news of “Garota de Ipanema,” the “latest champion of album sales in the United States, beating out the Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night.'”

“Garota de Ipanema” was released in early 1963 on the Phillips LP A Bossa dos Cariocas, and six months later Tom introduced it to American listeners on the Verve LP The Composer of Desafinado Plays. At the end of ’63, Verve released the Astrud Gilberto/Stan Getz single “Girl from Ipanema” (with the title taken from the new English-language version, by Norman Gimbel), and then in 1964, the tremendously influential album Getz/Gilberto, which changed the musical landscape around much of the world, became the first Grammy-Award-winning album from non-American artists and propelled “Garota de Ipanema” and the amateur Astrud Gilberto to enduring international stardom.

Finally, I don’t have much to say about “O amor em paz,” except thatthe harmony and lyrics are brilliantly complementary in this song, shifting between minor and major modes as the lyrics shift between notes of sadness and joy. João Gilberto released the song on his self-titled LP in 1961.

In 1920, José Barbosa da Silva — known by his nickname “Sinhô” — was dubbed the “King of Samba” by the newspaper Correio da Manhã. And the title stuck.February 1920 – Correio da Manhã crowns Sinhô the “king of carioca samba”. Sinhô had three major Carnival hits that year.

In 1917, Sinhô (José Barbosa da Silva, 8 September 1888 – 4 August 1930) learned a rather bitter lesson about the money that could be made with Carnival songs when he witnessed the unprecedented commercial success of Donga’s “Pelo Telefone.” The song is widely and erroneously cited as being Brazil’s “first recorded samba.” It’s actually a maxixe, and there were at least 23 recorded “sambas” released prior to 1916; nevertheless, it was the first recorded “samba” to achieve such resounding commercial success, and to demonstrate to composers that composing songs for Carnival could be a lucrative business. The release of “Pelo Telefone” hence opened the era of Carnival compositions.

The success of “Pelo Telefone” didn’t sit well with Sinhô because the song had in fact been a collaborative effort, based on a popular folk song, in which he had played a significant role, along with others who frequented the famed home of Tia Ciata, the most legendary of the tias baianas (Bahian aunties) who opened their homes around Praça Onze to this gaggle of pioneering composers. But when Donga registered the song, he listed only himself and Mauro de Almeida as the songwriters.

Sinhô’s frustration at being erased from the official history and rights to royalties of “Pelo Telefone” helped spark the inspiration for his first major success, “Quem são eles (a Bahia é boa terra),” first recorded by Bahiano and back-up singers at Casa Edison in Rio de Janeiro. And this song set off the first major duel in the annals of Brazilian popular music.

Fenianos float, Carnival 1923.

Sinhô had initially named the song “A Bahia é Boa Terra,” but the samba ended up taking the name of a Carnival bloco (street parade group) that he was helping to lead that year, Quem são eles, which was associated with one of the city’s three major Carnival societies, Os Fenianos. The provocation “quem são eles” (who are they), then, originally referred to that club’s two principal rivals in Rio, Democráticos and Tenentes do Diabo. The “castle” mentioned in the song was the name for the Democráticos headquarters, and their members were called carapicus, a kind of fish, hence the “pickled fish” reference. (The Fenianos were called cats, which presumably devour pickled fish.) I assume the observation “it’s up there that the breeze breathes” must be some veiled insult against the rival Carnival club.

19 January 1921 – Jornal “O Imparcial” announcing the presence of Rio’s three most popular Carnival clubs at a great “battle of confetti” in Vila Isabel

On its surface, in its references to Bahia, the song lampooned an ongoing political skirmish between Bahian politicians Rui Barbosa and J.J. Seabra. But Sinhô took advantage of the theme to incorporate what were easily interpreted as digs at Bahia and Bahians in general, honing his storied knack for double entendre. His teasing wasn’t taken lightly: tias baianas like Tia Ciata were essential to the emergence of Rio’s samba. They provided the space for musical creation mixed with Afro-Brazilian religious practices that incubated carioca samba in its earliest manifestations. And many of the composers who hung out there – most notably João da Baiana and Donga – were sons of Bahian migrants. Bahia was deeply woven into their upbringing and musical influences. Sinhô wasn’t born to Bahians, but he was still a musical progeny of this group, having spent a good chunk of his early days as a musician at the homes of tias baianas. So when he released this samba that started out “Bahia is a good land/ her up there, me down here,” that clan not only took offense, but also considered it something of a betrayal by a composer who’d suddenly gotten a bit too big for his britches.

They were affronted by “I don’t have money/ but I’ll steal it,” interpreting it as a message that Bahians couldn’t be trusted. (Sinhô’s biographer Edgar de Alencar published “sambar” in the place of “roubar,” steal, as the original lyrics. I’m not sure about that.) And they were likely extra galled by the smashing success of the song, which drowned out their 1918 release “O Malhador,” (registered to Donga and Pixinguinha, and also recorded by Bahiano), which had been Donga’s attempt to repeat the success of the prior year’s “Pelo Telefone.”

Funnily enough, in spite of its light mockery, the samba ultimately fit nicely into the style of sambas written by the “Bahian wing” of composers, with its syncopation; the “ai ai ai” that recalls the second part of “Pelo Telefone” (ai, ai, ai, deixa as mágoas para trás, o rapaz), and its evocation of rural scenes like the reference to the ox-cart driver. Iaiá and ioiô were terms with origins among slaves referring to masters’ sons (ioiô) and daughters (iaiá); the terms eventually evolved into terms of endearment used among slaves or freed slaves, or their offspring. As noted above, the original lyrics ended after the first “o luar já se foi.” But as was common practice those days, someone — maybe Sinhô, maybe Bahiano, maybe both — added the extra verses for the recording.

Sensitive to issues of rights and royalties after the case of “Pelo Telefone,” Sinhô ordered a custom stamp made to mark the authorized scores, thereby also marking the start of an era when royalties began to be taken more seriously – the advent of the professionalization of the popular composer.

“Quem são eles” quickly inspired four new compositions in retort: “Não és tão falado assim” (You’re not so widely spoken of), by Hilário Jovino Ferreira, a native of Pernambuco who had grown up and made his name in Bahia and moved at the end of the 19th century to Rio de Janeiro (more on him, an important Carnival booster, here); “Fica calmo que aparece,” by Donga; “Já te digo,” by Pixinguinha and his brother China; and “Entregue o samba aos seus donos,” also by Hilário Jovino, who asserted in the lyrics that Bahians were the true owners of sambas, while Sinhô was just a lame sell-out. What’s more, this song also decried Sinhô’s plagiarism, in this case specifically regarding Sinhô’s latest hit, another rib aimed at Bahian politician Rui Barbosa, “Fala meu louro” (aka “Papagaio louro”). Hilário published the lyrics together with a note denouncing Sinhô for “the most brazen plagiarism in the history of sambistas” and calling on all “sambistas” (with sambistas still published in quotation marks in 1920) to write sambas on this theme:

Entregue o samba a seus donos // Turn samba over to its owners

É chegada a ocasião // The time has come

Lá no Norte não fizemos // Up north we didn’t make

Do pandeiro profissão // A profession of the pandeiro

Falsos filhos da Bahia // Phony sons of Bahia

Que nunca passaram lá // Who’ve never even been there

Que não comeram pimenta // Never eaten chili sauce

Na moqueca e vatapá // In moqueca and vatapá

Mandioca mais se presta //Manioc is the good stuff

Muito mais que a tapioca //Much more than tapioca

Na Bahia não tem mais coco? //There’s no more coconut in Bahia?

É plágio de um carioca //That’s plagiarism by a carioca

Neither of Hilário Jovino’s responses were recorded, and today there’s unfortunately no record of “Não és tão falado assim” – lyrics or melody. Pixinguinha recorded an instrumental version of Donga’s “Fica calmo que aparece,” and the banal lyrics on the score make no apparent reference to the spat (“Keep calm, love will appear/ Passion is something that’s never forgotten”), suggesting these were merely the “official” lyrics, and that the song likely had an alternative set of spicier lyrics that have since been lost.

The most beautiful (by my judgment) and enduring of these four responses — “Já te digo” (also recorded by the fixture Bahiano for Casa Edison) — was also the most pointed roast of Sinhô, taking aim at his looks (“he’s tall/skinny/ugly, missing teeth”); his extravagant manner of dressing (“he suffered to use a stiff standing collar”); his short-lived flute-playing days (“When he used to play flute/ What agony!”), and his general dandy persona (“today he’s all dapper / on the dime of the suckers of Rio de Janeiro”):

“Já te digo” by Pixinguinha and China (1919)

__

Um sou eu, e o outro não sei quem é // One is me, I don’t know who the other one is
Um sou eu, e o outro não sei quem é // One is me, I don’t know who the other one is
Ele sofreu pra usar colarinho em pé // He suffered to use a stiff standing collar (?)
Ele sofreu pra usar colarinho em pé// He suffered to use a stiff standing collar

To the dismay of Sinhô’s detractors, the public really didn’t care about the feud or the accusations of plagiarism; they loved Sinhô’s songs, and he quickly established his place as Brazil’s most successful popular music composer of the 1920s,”teaching Brazil to like samba,” as Jairo Severiano has put it.

Just in 1920 he had three major hits, which all hid digs at his rivals: “Vou me benzer” (I’m going to get blessed/ to rid myself / of those evil eyes / they cast on me”); the marchinha “Pé de Anjo,” a blatant copy of the French waltz “C’est pas difficile,” which took aim at Pixinguinha’s brother China, who was known for having huge feet (and which also launched Francisco Alves‘s career as a recording artist); and “Fala meu louro,” mentioned above, about Bahian Rui Barbosa’s loss in the 1919 presidential elections.

Likewise, the success of “Já te digo” propelled Pixinguinha’s career, which of course was so paramount and prolific that historian and musicologist Ary Vasconcellos famously wrote in his classic Panorama da Música Popular Brasileira, “If you have 15 volumes to talk about all Brazilian popular music, you can be sure that it’s too little. But if you have only enough space for one word, not everything is lost; write quickly: Pixinguinha.”
_____

Main sources for this post: Uma História do Samba, vol. I, by Lira Neto; Nosso Sinhô do Samba by Edgar de Alencar; Feitiço Decente by Carlos Sandroni; and conversations with Jairo Severiano

Aldir Blanc was born in Estácio — one of Rio de Janeiro’s neighborhoods known as the “cradle of samba” — in 1946. When he was six*, his family moved to Vila Isabel (another “cradle of samba”) to a house on Rua dos Artistas. The yard of the new home provided a perfect natural playground for a young child, with its guava, orange and banana trees. These trees, and the sounds associated with them – like cicadas and song-thrushes (sabiás, the Brazilian national bird) – became an indelible part of the imagery of mid-19th-century Vila Isabel that Aldir passes on through his songs, poetry, and stories (crônicas). Aldir weaves together the scenery, sounds, and slang from the era, elegantly recreating Rio’s Zona Norte of his childhood.

Vila Isabel was one of Rio de Janeiro’s first planned neighborhoods, laid out by the abolitionist Barão de Drummond in the early 1870s. (Drummond is better known for having created Brazil’s widely popular, albeit illegal, animal-based gambling game, Jogo do Bicho, to promote his new zoo in Vila Isabel.) The thoroughfare, named for the date in 1871 that Princesa Isabel decreed the Law of Free Birth, earned the distinguished designation of “boulevard” because it was most painstakingly modeled after Parisian boulevards. In the song, the store clerks on the boulevard, like their French forebear Madame Bovary, exude disappointment with their monotonous lives; nearby, oiti trees waltz, as if to Strauss’s famous “Tales from the Vienna Woods.” While Boulevard 28 de Setembro was lined with pau-ferro (“iron wood trees”) in 1910, oiti is another favorite native tree for urban arborization that was planted around Vila Isabel and surrounding Zona Norte neighborhoods in the beginning of the 20th century.

Aldir Blanc in a Vasco jersey.

Agatha Christie’s novel Murder on the Orient Express was first released in 1934, and the “victim and assassin” line makes reference to this mystery. I imagine that with Orient Express, Aldir is referring to the tram that ran in Vila Isabel until the mid-1960s, or the bus line. Blanc, like the late-night coachman of the song, is vascaíno – a die-hard fan of Rio’s Vasco da Gama football team. To “give some to the saint” is a practice of pouring a little bit of alcohol on the ground before drinking. In this line, though in the translation it sounds as though he’s still talking about the coachman, here he actually seems (to me) to be back to talking about himself.

Closely associated with the melancholy pierrot, the marcha-rancho is a slower, more richly melodious style of Carnaval marcha that was most popular from the 1930s – 1950s. Aldir’s mention of the pierrot of a marcha-rancho sets the stage for the reminiscence that follows, a wistful tribute to a series of beloved masters of Brazilian popular music of the 20th century who had passed away over the preceding 25 years, and who were known for the characteristics he mentions: Lupicínio’s famous song “Nervos de aço,” for instance, Vinicius’s full glass of spirits, and ultimately, Elis’s overwhelming majesty. The song was composed shortly after Elis Regina’s untimely death in January 1982, which had left Aldir stunned. The two had been devoted musical partners, but they’d recently had a falling out, of sorts. Aldir laments that he hadn’t properly gotten the chance to reconcile.

“Tempos do Onça e da Fera”

Example of a “quarador”, or bleaching ground. Sometimes clothes were laid on wire drying racks.

“Nos tempos do Onça” (in the days of the Jaguar) is an old-fashioned carioca way of saying a long, long time ago. The saying derived from references to the Portuguese administrator of Rio de Janeiro from 1725 – 1732, Luís Vaia Monteiro. Monteiro’s harsh, irascible nature earned him the nickname of the “onça,” or jaguar.

The quarador — also known as quaradouro or cuarador — was an especially sunny plot in the yard or courtyard where clothes were laid out to dry, and is usually referred to as a drying ground or bleaching ground in English. Here Aldir recalls the quarador in his childhood home, where his dear grandfather’s shirts soaked up the “honest sun” of the olden days together with elements of the natural surroundings.

Aldir has said that by and large his lyrics and writings are built of the recollections of the little boy who lived in Vila Isabel, where he could hearBenedito Lacerda’s flute floating in from nearby, and where he was likely first enchanted by the sambas of his predecessor in the Vila, the “poet of the Vila” Noel Rosa. To this day, when asked to choose “the most beautiful song,” he gives a few responses – all by Noel Rosa.

These two songs clearly express Aldir’s love and pining for the neighborhood as it was in his early childhood, or even before. Aldir’s grandparents helped raise him — in part because his mother suffered from debilitating depression — and his close relationship with them may have helped him develop his rich repertoire of old-time sayings and manners of speaking, along with his robust sense of nostalgia.

For more on the Aldir Blanc – João Bosco partnership, see these posts.